Chapter 1

The Work of the Lens Designer

Before a lens can be constructed it must be designed, that is to say, the radii of curvature of the surfaces, the thicknesses, the air spaces, the diameters of the various components, and the types of glass to be used must all be determined and specified.1,2 The reason for the complexity in lenses is that in the ideal case all the rays in all wavelengths originating at a given object point should be made to pass accurately through the image of that object point, and the image of a plane object should be a plane, without any appearance of distortion (curvature) in the images of straight lines.

Scientists always try to break down a complex situation into its constituent parts, and lenses are no exception. For ...

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